כי לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם

כִּי לֹא מַחְשְׁבוֹתַי מַחְשְׁבוֹתֵיכֶם, וְלֹא דַרְכֵיכֶם דְּרָכָי

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Artscroll Censorship Unmasked

From On The Main Line, a curious case of zealous censorship. Rabbeinu Artscroll has released an English translation of Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin’s ‘Oznayim Latorah’. And guess what? A remark about Robinson Crusoe, seems to have gone missing.

The original:

The new Artscroll holy version, censored and all:

The following lines are missing after the paragraph that ends with “…and talk with him.” and before the paragraph starting with “Sitting in isolation…”:

I found the agony of solitude described in the book "Robinson Crusoe" where the tale is told of a man who survived a shipwreck by landing upon a small, desolate island without another soul. It described his great difficulties until he was able to find something to eat and drink, and to shelter himself with the skins of animals. After dwelling for a long time on this island, he began to forget how to speak and almost lost his mind. The writer portrayed with vivid colors the man's longing for another person to speak with.

Because a godol will, of course, never read any chol books!PS I heard of this kind of thing before where a psak of Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann got censored, to do with kol baisha ervah but perhaps that was the Tzitz Eliezer.

8 comments:

Anonymous: Thanks so much for the link! Got the Hoffmann thing right but it was indeed about giluy rosh in Melamed Lehoil. Tzitz Eliezer is indeed the mekor for trei kalei lo nishmain. Yeyasher kochacha!

SY: We have a local haredi newspaper that doesn't even place pictures of women in it and if there are women on a picture (like in a shiur for men and women) they just use a marked to 'undo their presence'. Quite disturbing... BTW: Happy to have you here, SJ!